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User blog:Zolnir/Dust: The Ultimate Theory (For Now)
"It seems that the two of you are slowly getting confused. I’ll summarize the two theories here just to clarify them better. Man, born from dust, was strong, wise, and resourceful, but he was born into an unforgiving world. An inevitable darkness - creatures of destruction; the creatures of [http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Grim ''Grim]'' - set their sights on man and all of his creations. Theory number 1 suggested treating ‘Man born from Dust’ as one would say ‘Man born from planet Earth’. Here, the word ‘dust’ is a reference to the world itself. Theory number 2 suggested taking ‘Man born from Dust’ literally and that mankind are born from the very source of power that helped them eventually win the war. This is also plausible, but before that, let’s take a look at what this tool, ‘Dust’ really is. However, even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change. And in time, man's passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity led them to the tools that would help even the odds. This power was appropriately named [http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Dust ''Dust]''. The passage suggested that eventually mankind finally created the tools that helped win them the war against Grim. These tools are appropriately called ‘Dust’, because they are the world’s strength itself. This refers to the power of nature such as water, fire, thunder etc, and the statement below supports it. Nature's wrath in hand, man lit their way through the darkness, and in the shadow's absence came strength, civilization, and most importantly, life." ''--------------'' The Other Possibility: Mankind's Creation of Dust The above is a reply I posted on On The Topic of Dust: Explanation? , and the reason I posted it here was to simply clarify things that may confuse people (such as the difference between 2 Dust). I would not discuss which theory is more plausible, because they both are. Instead, I’d like to redirect the attention to a more peculiar part of the narrative. Here are the dialogues of the beginning narration: Narrator: "Legends... Stories scattered through time. Mankind has grown quite fond of recounting the exploits of heroes and villains, forgetting so easily that we are remnants - byproducts - of a forgotten past." Narrator: "Man, born from dust, was strong, wise, and resourceful, but he was born into an unforgiving world. An inevitable darkness - creatures of destruction; the creatures of ''[http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Grim ''Grim]'' - set their sights on man and all of his creations. These forces clashed, and it seemed the darkness was intent on returning man's brief existence to the void." '''Narrator': "However, even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change. And in time, man's passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity led them to the tools that would help even the odds. This power was appropriately named ''[http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Dust ''Dust].''" '''Narrator': "Nature's wrath in hand, man lit their way through the darkness, and in the shadow's absence came strength, civilization, and most importantly, life." Narrator: "But even the most brilliant lights eventually flicker and die, and when they are gone, darkness will return." Narrator: "So you may prepare your guardians, build your monuments to a so-called 'free world', but take heed: There will be no victory in strength." Ozpin (voice over): "But perhaps victory is in the simpler things that you've long forgotten - things that require a smaller, more honest soul." Now then. The common belief right now was that long, long ago, when mankind was on the verge of despair, they’ve discovered a source of power, utilized it, and eventually drove the darkness away with its power. They then named it as Dust because it is the power of nature, and thus the power of the world itself. This references to Theory 1 where the RWBY world is called ‘Dust’ (if you’re confused just treat it as you would say planet Earth). Parts of this belief, unfortunately, could be wrong. Let’s re-read the passage below carefully: Narrator: "However, even the smallest spark of hope is enough to ignite change. And in time, man's passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity led them to the tools that would help even the odds. This power was appropriately named ''[http://rwby.wikia.com/wiki/Dust ''Dust].''" Nowhere in the passage was the discovery of Dust ever mentioned. Of course, I understand that the passage could still hint that way despite the lack of mention, but let’s look at the other possibility this time (that is, the opposite of mankind discovering Dust). Now then, what exactly was this other possibility? 1) Mankind did not discover Dust. Instead, they’ve ''created Dust, and thus it was due to ‘man’s passion, resourcefulness, and ingenuity’ that ‘led them to the tools that would help even the odds’. Note that the three traits mentioned here can be all related to a researcher’s spirit, whereas the most important trait required in discovery – Luck – wasn’t mentioned at all. Obviously there are some flaws to the above assumption. Number one, how on earth did mankind generate Dust? We know of one Dust form that’s crystalline from Episode 1, ‘Crystals, pure, uncut’ should mean that there are at least natural depositories of crystals somewhere. I beg to differ, however. You’ll forgive me for taking real crystal as references, and do know that this was incredibly shaky proof since no one said the series must follow real life exactly. . These, are uncut crystals. Literally not one of them shared a similar shape or size, and while natural crystal formations do share a similar shape, again none of them were entirely the same (will always differ slightly in size or shape, as it was the way of nature). Look at this image of Dust crystals however. The full-sized, oval-shaped ones would be what I assumed as uncut crystals. It’s also the same shape as the crystal Roman held in his hands before blowing it up spectacularly a few minutes later. Every one of these ‘uncut’ crystals was shaped exactly the same, and hence I can argue that the crystals definitely looked more man-made than natural, and thus Dusts are creations of man. In short, I’m saying that Dusts are not a natural resource but a man-made product, and whatever natural resources or sources of power that led to the creation of Dusts was still an unknown. If we were to follow this line of logic, then the RWBY writers were trying to mislead people into thinking that Dust was a natural resource and then blow it in our face later. It would not surprise me if the majority of the RWBY citizens themselves believed the same. --------------------------------- Nature of the Source of Dust, Part 1 There are two assumptions. 1) Most of you would be asking, “Why do it in such a roundabout way? What is even the point?” My answer to that question would be this: It would make a longer (although still predictable) plot. Let me give you an assumption: Suppose that mankind has found a way to harness nature’s power and give it a solid, useable form. This power was derived and harnessed from the world itself – note that this is different from mining a natural resource; the world won’t suddenly end simply because you’ve used up all the oil in the world for example. Suppose that mankind did not realize that by deriving the power from nature (in order to create Dust) they’re actually using the world’s life itself. Yeah, at this point it’s all looking a bit FF-ish and you could basically guess the plot from there on. Note that this mysterious source of power does not necessarily have to be the world’s ‘Life’. Anything becomes exhausted sooner or later, and when the people could no longer produce Dust because the well’s dry, the darkness that’s been waiting for its chance for so long would sink in to kill the world. This was already hinted by the narration, “There would be no victory in strength”, which suggested that already mankind could not protect themselves and that very likely Dust/mysterious source of Dust, their greatest strength was running out. Also, to put it bluntly, this 1) assumption is boring. Hence I’m going to come up with my own explanation of things, one that would still be flawed (I will explain later) but could cover more bases with higher satisfaction. '---------------------------------' Differentiation between Dust and Other Powers I noticed that I hadn’t put my 2nd assumption in, but this topic must be mentioned ''first before it would actually make sense to anyone: There are normal people, and then there are not-so-normal people with superpowers. Get it? People who can use Dusts are ''not ''considered as people with superpowers, they’re just normal people who could use Dust to fight (And of course, superhumans could also use Dust). Dust was just a tool that anyone between age 1 to 999 could use. You might not believe me, but there are more than enough evidences that could support this theory. I’ll list all of them – or as much as I can remember – here: 1) Ruby’s mysterious red petal phenomenon that leaked from the cuts of her weapon, or her cape. Dust is a tool and hence it is created with a sense of purpose. Random leaking of red rose petals definitely does not count as one of them. 2) Yang with burning fire leaking out of her hair, and then her body. At one point when she twirled Melanie around and kicked her in the face her hair had burned in flames. Note that this doesn’t make sense if this was a Dust phenomenon because one, she had been fighting from the very beginning, and yet her hair never exhibited such a weird occurrence until then. You can’t say that she used a heck load of strength in that kick either because well, it wasn’t even Dust propelled (as compared to the punch she threw at Miltia it’s obviously weaker). This meant that as time dragged on Yang slowly lost control of whatever power she’s trying to contain, and the more she fought the more she instinctively drew from it. If we’re saying that it’s because she was drawing power from the Dust bullets she stored in her weapon, then why Weiss Schnee didn’t glow like Yang did? She was also using Dust from the very beginning too, and to be honest I would definitely have enjoyed see her light up in seven different colors. XD Note that Ruby’s hair didn’t burn either when she swapped cache. 3) Yang’s remark that Ruby was special. This is purely subjective, but I’ll like to think that her expertise in weapons weren’t the only reason why Yang thought of her that way. ''Both of them are special. 4) Blake’s mysterious bubbles of black when she gained a tremendous boost of speed. Same reasoning as the above, and hers was more decisive. While you may argue that Yang had swapped ‘special’ bullets and that’s why she burned (doesn’t explain why Ruby shot a trail of red petals out of her head though XD), Blake has no visible special Dusts, nor did she attempt to swap a new cache of bullets either. 5) The controversial Fauna issues. This was nearly a complete guess (deriving from the only Fauna sample we have, Adam) but I’ll assume that the Faunas have special powers that made normal humans fear and oppress them. 6) Adam’s disregard for ‘human’ lives. This was pretty simple. You are special and the humans aren’t. You’re being constantly oppressed and they the oppressor. Even I would scorn and stomp upon humans if I was him. 7) Adam’s mysterious skill ‘Seeing Red’. While I agree that stronger spells would take longer time to channel, remember that Glynda produced a freaking ice storm in a mere second. On the other hand, not only Adam had to charge for nearly a minute, he had to absorb energy shot out from the spider droid before he could finally unleash his skill. This suggested that he’s gathering energy not from a readily available source such as Dust, and most likely from his own body. 8) Weiss’s multiple applications of Dust, but not once do we see anything strange happening on her body. Out of all the four members of RWBY, Weiss was the only normal human being who fought purely through smart applications of Dust. I would love to see how she deals with this issue when she realized that *gasp* she’s the one that’s actually not special. *evil laughter* 9) Glynda’s application of Dust, and again we do not see anything weird or unexplainable other than the very temporal purple glow when she casted a big ice rain spell. In fact from the way she stopped attacking after Crimson blew away all of the purple shards, we can deduce that Glynda simply ran out of Dust and that she’s also just a normal human. In conclusion, mankind (including the Faunas and every other race that could be classified as man, but were not yet mentioned in the series) can be differentiated into two types: One, normal people. Two, people with super powers. --------------------------------- Nature of the Source of Dust, Part 2 By now someone would probably argue with me about something like, “We don’t know how Dust works!” and I’ll respond right now with a, “Duh, that’s why we’re speculating.” Onto the second and final assumption! 2) The source of power that generated Dust is none other than mankind themselves. Or should I say the mankind that has extraordinary powers. Obviously anyone’s first thought on this theory would be ‘bullshitting’, and I do share that sentiment at first. While we don’t exactly know the conversion ratio of ‘one super mankind -> ??? Dust crystals’, the sheer amount of people needed to generate enough Dust crystals to sell on the streets would definitely be staggering. But let us consider this carefully. The above line of reasoning actually fits with the fairy tale told at the beginning of the narration. If we assume that mankind did not ‘discover’ Dust but have created them, then why couldn’t they create it from their own powers? More importantly, we never knew exactly how powerful the old mankind or Grim was. What I believe about the history of RWBY was this: Once upon a time there were a lot of normal people and a few super-powered people (as portrayed there were warriors on the sides – normal people – and one seemingly important figure at the center, also the one said to be the ‘man born from dust’). Together they tried to fend off the Grim, but even though the super-powered people were incredibly strong they were completely outnumbered and the normal people can’t do much against the Grim, and at one point this damning number difference nearly eliminated the whole of mankind. However, one day the superhuman discovered a way to share their powers with the normal humans – these powers would later be called ‘Dust’. And so they passed out these fragments of powers to all the other normal people, and this time the normal people were no longer helpless, and together they finally managed to drive away the Grim and darkness. Overtime, civilizations were born, and on the world map it was shown that 4 countries/cities/something were of particular notice. I dare myself to deduce that they are based on the 3 primary Dust colors (Red, Blue and Yellow) and Black. These were the 4 ‘lights of hope’ built to always remind people what had saved them from a close call with destruction and despair. However, people are forgetful beings, and soon the true purpose of the countries/cities/something was forgotten, and they had dissolved into nothingness to form one huge ‘free’ country instead. Capitalism was now rampant and the all-important Dust was made into a commercialized item instead that could be randomly sold on the streets. I dare say that Dust consumption was at an all-time high, and in order to compensate corporations such as the Schnee resorted to inhuman methods to acquire more Dusts. Now then, this could be tied to the Fauna Civil Rights Protests. As you could see from the brief illustration, there was a sign that said, “We are not animals!” From this we could assume that these people with not-so-human ears were treated inhumanly, and that their rights currently were probably only slightly higher than what an animal would own. That meant that they were treated worse than a slave and almost not an intelligent being. In a sense, we were being told that the humans in RWBY do not treat the ‘faunas’ as humans. Hence it’s nearly unthinkable then the faunas could get any side of the law to help them (I mean, to put it rather crudely, it’s like your dog trying to sue your ass for abuse). The loss of life – perhaps even the extinction of the community itself – would not bother much conscience among the human community. In that case it would be easy as pie for the Schnee corporation (this is an example, who knows; maybe the Schnee might turned out to be completely innocent?) to kidnap a bunch of people and drain their powers to create Dust. Perhaps, god forbid, the whole act itself might even be legal. After all, don’t we experiment all sorts of terrible things onto lab rats for ‘the sake of the future’? But we’re getting off topic. Now, the above speculations begged an explanation of a time when everyone was being treated equally. Let’s see: first, I’m pretty sure that the superhuman simply donated their powers through their own free will for the creation of Dust. By the way, I didn’t say fauna because it would be misleading; obviously there are humans as well who have super powers. However, we may speculate that these humans with powers are of mixed blood between the fauna and normal humans. Of course, overtime the normal humans began to grow in numbers, and with the power of Dust they grew bold. They no longer feared the superhumans, and since there has always been more normal humans anyway. What I’m going to state below is completely guesswork (well actually almost this entire assumption was well, guesswork), but I think the general idea should be correct: 1) At first, the superhuman donated their power voluntarily. 2) It later became a mandatory rule for a superhuman of certain age to donate a certain volume of power. 3) When there were dissents about the unfair treatment some of the superhuman population broke away, whereas those who were left were subjected to worse treatment and extortion. 4) The superhumans began protesting to no avail. As technology improved, the humans found out that taking blood was a far more efficient method to derive Dust. 5) People of the superhuman community went missing. No longer satisfied with taking just blood, the human’s greed had now extended to the point that they outright kidnap people for their operations. This finally lead to the White Fang baring their teeth (assuming that the White Fang is on the fauna’s side) and the ugly protest reported in Episode 1. 6) The funny part is, with their past completely forgotten, most of the humans probably don’t even know that Dust comes directly from the descendants of their savior. The irony is strong, and the possible plotlines from here on could only flourish in strong evil! XD From here we can see why Adam despised human life, and why Blake seemed to be torn when Adam said it. Her parents (almost 100% certain here even though it’s just gut feeling) are 1 fauna and 1 human, and Blake is a mixed blood between the two. Of course she couldn’t choose her allegiance between the two kind, because she loved them both. Likely that at least one of her parents had died as well, because it made her strongly considered about the concept of human life. By the way, now that I think of it, the book she read in Episode 3? ‘Man with Two Souls’? I’m going to guess that she was thinking about the conflict between humans and fauna, and how the two of them were battling each other for control even though they were of the same roots. And this is basically the entirety of the theory. I actually like this idea a lot (if you can’t tell from the wall of texts), and not only it beats the stupid ‘world’s Life’ theory by a mile, it’s so far the only comprehensible theory I could think of that satisfactorily explained a part of RWBY’s plot with almost no contradictions. … Obviously the above discrimination theory could still be explained through the common belief (that is, Dusts are just boring shit that were mined from boring underground blah blah blah GOD YOU ARE SO BORING AND UNINSPIRING DO I REALLY NEED TO SAY MORE??), but well, I’ll borrow a quote from Detective Butler (99% of you wouldn’t know who he was, no need to check), “my way is so much more interesting”. Category:Blog posts